The Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE) registered a sharp drop on July 29, worrying traders for an hour and a half. Indices fell by 3.5 per cent in the first hour of the session. “The good news is that indices pared losses,” Dimitar Georgiev, a broker at Elana Trading brokerage, told SeeNews wire agency. “The two per cent fall of the main indices in the US overnight [...] and falls in Asia caused the drop. It is not only us, almost all European markets ended lower,” he said.  Small players have started to buy certain stocks, most probably influenced by the financial reports that companies release in the morning, Georgiev said.

“However, I do not think the market has reached the bottom today,” Georgiev said, adding that he expected the negative trend to persist throughout next week. At the end of the day, most stocks extended their losses. The Sofix index, which includes the 19 most liquid stocks on the BSE, lost 1.2 per cent, to close at 1006.51 points, while the broader BG40 index, which tracks the 40 most liquid companies on the BSE, dropped 1.48 per cent to 256.

On July 29, falls led advances by 74 to 27 and 27 stocks closed unchanged.  BSE’s turnover, excluding block and other pre-agreed deals, increased to 5.5 million leva from 3.2 million leva on July 28. As a whole, BSE’s stock indices closed the first half of 2008 with losses that erased last year’s gains. The Sofix index lost 34.73 per cent in the first six months of the year, the BG40 index dropped 40.84 per cent, the BG TR30 lost 29.85 per cent and the BG-REIT index fell 7.25 per cent.